International Criminal Tribunal confirms Russia’s military involvement in the armed conflict in the Donbas
The Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Court (The Hague Tribunal, the Netherlands) established a series of facts concerning the military confrontation between the Ukrainian military and the armed forces of the Russian Federation in the Donbass, as stated in a report by the ICC chief prosecutor, Fatu Bensouda, the Novosti Donbassa (Donbas News) reports.
In their 2016 report, it was established by the preliminary investigation that armed groups, including militants of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), "are sufficiently organized to be considered as parties to a non-international armed conflict." At the same time, there is an opportunity to view the confrontation in eastern Ukraine as an international conflict.
"The Office of the Prosecutor also provided additional information indicating the existence of a direct military confrontation between the armed forces of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, which implies that, at the latest since July 14, 2014, together with the non-international armed conflict, in eastern Ukraine, there was an international armed conflict," the report stated.
Since the beginning of the armed conflict, two periods of particularly fierce fighting were recorded by The Hague Court’s Prosecutor: in August 2014 in Ilovaysk and in Debaltsevo in the Donetsk region from January to February 2015. The prosecutor explains the escalation of the battles during this period by "an alleged inflow of troops, vehicles, and weapons from the Russian Federation to strengthen the positions of armed militant groups.”
As reported, the prosecutor's office of the Hague Tribunal has established 1,200 crimes in the Donbas.